Balmer said they were rooted in the perpetuation of racism. Again you have to go no further than a look at Pressler's inner circle in the Takeover days to see the network hardwired to White Citizens Council, Birch Society leftovers and my litany of bad actors William Thornton loves so much to hear my repeat and memorized by now

Still, again, you haven't been doing the remedial reading. Wuthnow spells it out beautifully how Atwaters racism of Pressler's inner circle morphed into the abortion and other aspects of the religion card. Pressler's obsession with James Dunn is Exhibit A and the campaign fundy leadership adopted to dispose of President Carter. Read Balmer's biography on the subject.

So Balmer takes you on this one.

At one point not long ago I said some kind things about David Rogers in an email to Balmer. He replied it appears he is a better man than his father.

The sad fact remains, Russell Moore and recently Bryant Wright on 60 Minutes and his church's embrace of 7 Syrian Refugee families; Folks like them would not have the platform for anecdotal stories of their redemption had they not been elevated by the bad actors like the fundy leadership of the takeover.

History is what it is. I tried to explain it today to Jon Meacham and his NY Times oped piece on Bush 41.

It's a tough row. I appreciate your eloquent replies. I just wish they had more substance.

Yes it is. And the points you are making regarding the SBC are tainted by the passing of time, and a memory that has created a remembrance of things that is a distortion of reality, and irrelevant to the present. Long time ago, different galaxy.

Tin foil hats Bonney, Thornton and Sandy continue to play the same game with Campus Crusade and Jack Chick they do with all my other research on the fundy takeover of the SBC.

Julie Ingersoll has a good answer for all of them in her exploration of David Barton with his many reverberations for FBC Spartanburg, Trey Gowdy and Rick and Bubba and Yellowhammer News of Alabama.

In her book on the Recons Building God's Kingdom with her investigations and rabbit trails of the Recon Network--Nelson Price and Shorter College takeover at the heart of it--here is what she says about Barton, a force in the state house of Bama among other places

Quoting page 208: There are those who continue to dismiss these associations as "guilt by association". My interest is in tracing the intellectual history and sociology of knowledge. While the Tea Party is a confluence of a number of ideological strands in American politics, the ties between them and the Recons are more substantial than the fact that a particular leader has been invited to speak to groups with whom he agrees. The ties between the .....Tea Party, The Const Party (and here sfox adds Trey Gowdy and Rick and Bubba and Nelson Price) and the Recons are significantly revealed in the formulation of their views, just not who they know

Will especially like Miller's reponse in the paragraph below the book promo. Paraphrase, Manion was a Bircher and he sits on the Board of the National Review.........

Good article. I've always thought that the right wing media, particularly Limbaugh, Roger Ailes and Hannity, once they discovered how to rake in the bucks from finding a niche to feed, are largely responsible for the slide into the current disgusting state of politics, that slings crap around, and broadcasts anything it thinks will hurt those who don't agree with them whether its true or not. They also happen to be men who treat women like property, and can't seem to keep their pants zipped up when they're around them, married or not, or stay with the same one when another one comes along. I guess that's why they like Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani and Newt Gingrich so much. But...

Nothing there has anything to do with the conservative resurgence/fundamentalist takeover of the SBC, nor does it prove any particular alliances existed for the purpose of helping the takeover. There's also an article there to click that shows white Evangelical support for Trump is down well below the levels that Romney got, which sort of blows holes in Stephen's theory. Here's a link http://religiondispatches.org/trumps-le ... ght-think/

On the eve the San Antonio Convention where Vines won by a percentage point over Richard Jackson and Pressler used the victory to go straight for Baptist Press--I was in the room with a press pass for that unforgettable SBC Ex Com meeting--there was an article by Duane Toole and Stephen M Fox that was explicit about the links of the takeover leaders to the Far Right. A Quote from Pou Bailey to Jesse Helms on the Senate Judiciary committee from which Helms had nominated the yard dog sam Currin for a NC district judicial post, a letter from Bailey where he said " I can think of no greater danger than a fanatic with power"; and that's what you'll get with Sam Currin. Currin was the mad dog Pressler and Helms sicced on James Dunn and the BJC from grievances Pressler had against Bill Moyers and the Carter campaign in Texas in 76, then Carter hit the oil industry with a windfall profits tax in 78 and Pressler's concerns about the Book of Daniel and the first eleven chapters of Genesis took on new urgency.

We talk about Delahoyde who went after Randall Lolley and his ties to the Helms Pressler leftover Birchers camp; the council for National Policy and the network that bragged about having the SBC "in their back pocket".

So there you go, don't ever say you weren't warned or plead ignorance again.

Stephen, while you have, from time to time, found and posted some great articles which show how evangelicals and conservatives have completely abandoned any semblance of Christian faith and values in their support for Trump and his agenda, including the sanctity of human life, I think you're wasting cyberspace on attempts to reconstruct the history of the SBC conservative resurgence, and you're not hitting very well on the theme of their connections to the religious right, either to solicit help to gain and retain control of the denomination, or to use its influence on behalf of partisan politics.

Many of the players are now dead. Pressler is almost 90, and according to a friend of mine who attends the same church, has to be helped in and out of his car on the rare occasions he shows up for worship. He's no longer on the bench. Patterson is still around, but well past 70, and presides over the shriveled, depopulated, still shrinking Southwestern Seminary, which is now selling off physical assets to pay bills. Control of the SBC has shifted to a whole new lineup of leaders, starting with the selection of Frank Page as executive director, who have a whole different set of problems to deal with, mostly having to do with how to restore the SBC's relevance, and handle accelerating declines in attendance and membership. The SBC of the 60's and 70's was inevitably headed for the kind of conflict it experienced, because its educational institutions and some of its leaders tried to get too far ahead of where the membership was doctrinally and theologically, and it didn't really matter who, or how, the adjustment would come. None of that matters now, anyway, if it ever really did even back then. Outside of the people who lived and breathed "Southern Baptist life," it didn't matter and no one cared. Not even a lot of Southern Baptists did.

Until we moved up north, my wife and I had never been members of any other kind of church, other than a Baptist congregation that severed its ties with the SBC (but not the state convention or association) about a year before we moved away. We both went to state convention related colleges, and I graduated from Southwestern, so all of that denominational loyalty was ingrained, and difficult to get used to thinking in terms of belonging to a church of another denomination. Our membership in the Alliance church had run its course back during the fall, and as we've moved on, there hasn't been a thought given to finding and joining an SBC church.

Keep finding those articles which point to the hypocrisy and abandonment of values of those who claim to be Christians but who have bought into the empty, worldly philosophy of the Trump buffoon. Those are great. As far as ex-SBC stuff goes, trash it and go find a nice Methodist or Lutheran church to attend, or better yet, Society of Friends.